Chapter 285: The Door-Door Fruit
In the end, Franky was still somewhat guilty of judging a book by its cover. No matter how he looked at it, Ginny simply didn't possess the physique of someone who could expertly wield such a massive heavy weapon. That is, until he watched her lift the colossal cannon with effortless ease and casually aim it down the sights.
"This gun looks pretty good. It should definitely solve my lack of raw firepower," Ginny remarked, testing the weight.
When you lack innate destructive power, a larger caliber is always the perfect substitute. In the New World, where Armament Haki was becoming increasingly common, artillery of this caliber wasn't considered a fatal threat to top-tier fighters. After all, monsters casually tanking cannon fire with Haki or slicing cannonballs out of the air with swords were everywhere.
However, outside of the New World, massive calibers were incredibly effective against the vast majority of enemies. Even an absolute legend like Whitebeard hadn't been immune to artillery; the scars from cannon fire remained on his body until the day he died.
While cannon fire might not deliver a fatal blow to a true powerhouse, it was exceptionally useful for whittling down their stamina.
Ginny's unique vampiric vision allowed her to see far beyond the limits of ordinary humans, and the drastically enhanced range of this custom weapon perfectly complemented her sharpshooting needs.
"Hey, blue-haired kid!" Ginny called out. "Where's a good target? I want to test-fire this thing!"
"Give me a sec..."
This time, Franky didn't wheel out a target ship. Business in Water 7 had been thoroughly abysmal lately, and scrap ships suitable for target practice weren't exactly lying around in abundance. Instead, he simply set up a reinforced target dummy on the distant shoreline.
"The safety is right here, and the crosshairs are aligned to—"
"My marksmanship is flawless. You don't need to explain the basics to me," Ginny interrupted confidently.
"This is a cannon! It's a cannon, not a gun!" Franky yelled, waving his arms.
"It's all the same to me. I'm going to be using it like a gun anyway."
Franky looked ready to violently argue the fundamental engineering differences between a cannon and a rifle—fully prepared to launch into a passionate debate akin to explaining why a "super-large" cup wasn't just a "large" cup—but Iceburg quickly grabbed his shoulder and held him back.
It was certainly frustrating to see a masterpiece misused, but arguing semantics with the client was completely unnecessary.
BOOM!
The deafening, familiar roar of artillery echoed across the shipyard. Accompanied by the sharp clinking of massive brass casings hitting the ground, Ginny fired continuously, not stopping until she had completely emptied the ten-round magazine.
"Phew, now that packs a punch," Ginny smirked, blowing the smoke from the barrel. "The magazine is a bit small, though. Blue-haired kid, can you make a magazine with a higher capacity?"
"That's simple enough to fix," Franky muttered, staring at her in disbelief. "But you're definitely not a simple woman..."
Increasing the magazine capacity was the easiest problem to solve. He didn't even need to forge a new one from scratch; he could just weld and heavily modify two existing magazines together.
"But if you're actually planning to use this massive thing like a standard rifle... aren't you terrified of becoming a sitting duck on the battlefield? A weapon that heavy is a nightmare to reposition quickly..."
"You don't need to worry about that," Ginny smiled. "I'll be taking this now. Just add the modifications to Mr. Tom's final bill."
Ginny casually raised her free hand and pressed it against the empty air. Instantly, a spatial rift appeared, swinging open like a physical door floating in the middle of nothingness. Carrying her massive, Schrödinger's cannon-gun, Ginny casually stepped into the Air Door and vanished from sight.
As a dedicated intelligence operative, Ginny had gained a significant boost in baseline combat power after her vampiric conversion, but she still lacked the overwhelming brute strength of a true frontline brawler.
While it seemed like the world was overflowing with famous Devil Fruit users, that was purely survivor's bias; ability users naturally found it easier to make a name for themselves. In reality, Devil Fruits remained impossibly rare treasures across the sea.
Even Kaido, who was absolutely obsessed with Zoan-type fruits, had only managed to locate a single Mythical Zoan—the Okuchi no Makami—after decades of searching.
While Nereus possessed a small stockpile of Devil Fruits, many Fish-Men and Merfolk fundamentally despised the idea of losing their ability to swim. Consequently, those fruits were often allocated to the non-aquatic races under his command.
After the Door-Door Fruit had gathered dust in the Ryugu Kingdom's vault for quite some time, Nereus eventually bestowed it upon Ginny.
While the fruit didn't provide overwhelming frontal offensive power, it was the absolute ultimate tool for espionage and infiltration. By utilizing the alternate dimension of the "Door World," Ginny could bypass any physical security and position herself perfectly to eavesdrop on highly classified conversations.
As long as she didn't literally step out of the dimension directly into someone's face, even elite Observation Haki users found it nearly impossible to detect her presence while she was hidden within the parallel space.
Relying on this exact ability, Ginny had recently infiltrated the immediate vicinity of Enies Lobby and deployed specialized wiretapping Den Den Mushi to intercept intelligence.
As one of the World Government's three absolute pillars of justice, Ginny had fully expected to uncover highly valuable, classified intelligence there.
The reality, however, was violently different. On an island that proudly wore the title of "Judicial," there was absolutely zero intelligence related to actual, fair legal proceedings.
Once a person was dragged to Enies Lobby, regardless of the truth, the only possible verdict was "Guilty."
The only mildly valuable piece of intelligence she managed to extract was the tragic realization that two Giants had been completely brainwashed and manipulated into serving as Enies Lobby's gatekeepers.
The lies used to manipulate them were directly tied to the other two Giants they had encountered back on Little Garden.
However, the alternate dimension of the Door World was vast and statically linked to the real world. If someone left an object inside the Door World and then opened an Air Door in a completely different geographical location, the left-behind object wouldn't teleport with them; it remained exactly where it was dropped in the parallel space.
Through the Air Doors, Ginny could effortlessly take reality-bending shortcuts.
Since she could bypass all physical obstacles and view her destination directly, even someone with a catastrophically terrible sense of direction could flawlessly navigate to their target.
By the time Ginny re-emerged and found Kuma, Tom was excitedly presenting their completed ship.
"We designed massively expanded cabins and specialized, reinforced quarters to perfectly accommodate the big guy!" Tom boomed with pride. "We've also installed a state-of-the-art thruster system capable of drawing auxiliary power directly from electrical energy!"
As long as the client's requests weren't completely physically impossible, Tom could fulfill them. Integrating electrical power was child's play for him.
In a world where many islands hadn't even discovered electricity, electrical power was considered a highly advanced, legitimate energy source—certainly vastly more practical than relying on carbonated cola as a primary fuel.
After Ginny, Luna, and the rest of the crew officially received their new ship and custom weapons from Water 7, they didn't linger. Setting sail immediately, they continued their voyage toward Fish-Man Island.
Not long after, their ship sailed into a terrifyingly dense, oppressive fog.
The eerie, suffocating mist blanketed the ocean in an atmosphere of pure dread. Occasionally, the rotting, dilapidated husks of ghost ships drifted silently past them, while shattered wooden debris bobbed aimlessly on the dark waves.
Ginny had naturally taken over the role of lookout. The gloom and dense fog severely crippled an ordinary human's vision, but it hardly affected her.
If one looked closely, her eyes were currently glowing with a piercing, crimson light, her pupils having subtly narrowed. For a vampire, this dark, sunless environment was actually incredibly comfortable.
"Dead ahead..." Ginny called down from the crow's nest.
"Ginny, in that direction... is there something that looks like an island?" Kuma suddenly asked from the deck.
"You can see it too, Kuma?" Ginny asked in surprise. "Has your Observation Haki really improved that much? Yeah, there's definitely something massive dead ahead... it looks like either an island or a ridiculously gigantic ship."
"No, it's not my Observation Haki..." Kuma murmured, his brow furrowing deeply. "I just... sense a very familiar presence. That place... it feels like I've marked it before."
The teleportation capabilities of the Paw-Paw Fruit were not entirely without limitations. If Kuma could physically see a location with his own eyes, he could instantly repel himself there.
But if he wanted to teleport somewhere beyond his line of sight, it had to be a location he had personally visited and "marked" before. He was absolutely certain he had never sailed through these specific waters, yet through the suffocating fog, a terrifyingly familiar connection resonated with his Devil Fruit, dredging up incredibly unpleasant memories...
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